Morocco and Spain: the need for a joint reading of a common history
Moroccans (and with them all Muslims) regard the fall of Granada on 2 January 1492, at the hands of the combined forces of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, as the end of an eight-century-long presence characterised by brilliant periods of civilisation and progress, while Spaniards interpret it as the ultimate victory after centuries of attempts to reclaim Al-Andalus and return it to the Catholic Church, thus freeing it from the grip of 'Moors' of dubious ethics and intentions.
On the other hand, Moroccans see the Inquisition against Muslims and Jews in the 16th century (which specifically and officially began in 1478 and did not end until 1834) as a mad desire for revenge, ethnic cleansing and an attempt to erase the traces of Muslims in Spain. The Spanish, for their part, see it as a representation of a kind of religious fervour and extremism directed at anyone the Church considered heresy and was never intended only for Muslims and Jews.
Three centuries later, Spain launched a war against the city of Tetouan in 1860, which the Spanish saw as an attempt to deter attacks by Moroccan forces against the cities of Ceuta and Melilla, while the latter saw it as a continuation along the lines of Spanish colonial interests, which reached its climax when Spain occupied the Moroccan Sahara in 1888 and all of northern Morocco (except Tangier) in 1912.
The Rif war was also not without contradictory readings on both sides: Moroccans see it as an epic of the anti-colonial struggle, while Spaniards interpret it as a rogue uprising of the mountain-dwelling and brutally behaved Berbers (see Hassan Haddad, "Love in the Rif" or the battle of "Annual" as seen by Spanish cinematographers", Al-Amq Al-Maghribi, 13 May 2021).
Franco's rise and victory against the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) were also not excluded from interpretations that add to prejudices about the other. Spaniards consider the involvement of Moroccan volunteers recruited by General Franco in the northern regions of Morocco as a Moroccan attempt to put an end to the emerging democracy in Spain. While Moroccans claim that their country, at the time a French and Spanish colony, the role of the king (and his representative in the area under Spanish rule) was fictitious and neither was fully capable of controlling Franco's recruitment in the north nor that of France in the central regions during World War II and the Indochina Wars.
The situation was exacerbated by the 1975 Green March seen by Spaniards as a humiliation of their country, at a critical moment when Franco was dying and signs of a constitutional vacuum were beginning to appear on the horizon. Otherwise the Moroccans see it as an interaction with the decision of the International Court of Justice issued on 16 October 1975, which states that the Moroccan Sahara was not an "empty land" when it was colonised by the Spanish in 1888 and that there were oaths of allegiance between the Saharan tribes and the Moroccan kings over the centuries.
In the Spanish view, the Green March, the restoration of the Sahara, the events of Laila Island (2002), Morocco's enactment of a law defining its territorial waters in 2019, and its decision to end the smuggling of goods from Ceuta and Melilla, closing the borders with the occupied cities, the crisis that occurred after allowing Ibrahim Ghali (who leads the separatist movement for the Sahara) to enter Spain under a false identity, and then the attempts of mass emigration to Ceuta in May 2021, in addition to the increasing presence of Moroccans in Spain. All these facts and events are, from the Spanish point of view, nothing more than a careful process of implementing a long-term expansionist plan aimed at reconstructing the greater Maghreb stretching from Mauritania in the south to Al-Andalus in the north via the Moroccan Sahara and the eastern desert west of Algeria.
Spain's repudiation of its commitments in relation to the Madrid Tripartite Agreement (14 November 1975, through which Morocco recovered its sovereignty over the Sahara), its insistence on ignoring that the Sahara is a matter of life and death for the Moroccans, in addition to its popular, partisan and media support for Polisario, and its slowness in opening a debate on Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands, Morocco's view of irregular immigration laxities as blackmail exercised by Morocco against Spain, its concern over the delimitation of Morocco's maritime borders, its sceptical view of Morocco's efforts to modernise its defence arsenal to cope with Algerian harassment, and its belief that all danger and evil comes from its southern neighbour. All of the above is seen by Morocco as a constant attempt by Spain to weaken it, limit its role and curb its expertise in achieving its geostrategic and vital objectives in the north, west and south.
All this means that relations between Morocco and Spain are dominated by conflicting and contradictory interpretations. Each has its own version and narrative, which are contentious, because prejudices and fixed views of the other have been ingrained on both sides since the Middle Ages. The paradox is that trade and economic relations have developed greatly, as have the social and cultural relations between the two peoples, which are very deep. However, political dialogue remains sterile and dominated by a narrow vision of interests and tactical calculations, whether internal or external.
We must therefore work on a re-reading of the common history, an objective and scholarly reading away from prejudices and judgement of intentions. This requires the intervention of expert and objective historians to fix the mechanisms of understanding the meaning of the Christian reconquest of Spain, the process of the expulsion, the role of the Inquisition, and a critical understanding of the Spanish colonising past and its relationship with the Rif War and its tragedies, the Sahara question, Ceuta and Melilla, as well as shedding light on the role of Morocco and the Moroccans in the Spanish Civil War, and a critical re-reading of the period of Spain's exit from northern Morocco, Tarfaya, Sidi Ifni, and then the Sahara and its relationship to the end of Franco's regime in order to find out to what extent the alleged Moroccan exploitation of Franco's illness to impose a fait accompli on Spain is true.
Rereading history does not mean determining who was wrong and who was right, but serves to establish mechanisms for a common understanding of real events whose occurrence is documented through careful and abstract historical writing. This proposed reading does not aim to remain silent about the tragedies of the past, nor to find excuses or justifications for them. What matters is to explore the depths of history in order to reconcile it with its tragedies, pains and tragic events, and to lay the foundations for a complex and critical dealings (in the philosophical sense of Edgar Morin and Daniel Innerarity) with its remains and effects.
The two sides must engage in a philosophical, historical and conceptual dismantling of prejudices, persistent visions, linguistic templates and rhetorical protocols for each side over the other in order to create a space for a critical debate on the commonality, on the past with its tragedies, the present with its challenges and the future with its hopes and promises.